World Mental Health Day

Today is World Mental Health Day – a day dedicated to raising awareness of mental health issues and mobilising efforts in support of mental health.

Around one in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year and it can affect anyone of us.

Since the first World Mental Health Day in 1992, great strides have been made in challenging stigma around mental health and discussing mental health more openly. As the stigma around mental health has been challenged, more people are open and willing to talk to people about their mental health.

It is great that we all talk more about mental health and that really is something to celebrate. We must keep talking; talking is essential but not enough. Mental health has been overlooked and underfunded for so long that people who need and deserve support are continuously let down by a system that fails to provide sufficient support and provide it quickly enough.

Mental Health services in this country are still underfunded, which means that thousands of children and vulnerable adults are not getting the support and treatment they need, when they need it.

In Parliament alongside my Labour colleagues I have repeatedly called on the Government to provide our mental health funding with the resources its needs. We have also pressed the Government to ring-fence mental health funding to ensure that funding reaches the front line and increase investment in early intervention services. Mental health was a priority issue in our manifesto last year and we will continue to do all that what we can to call for improvements in mental health services.